


Calm in the Storm

by Dorinda



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Genre: Injury, Kissing, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-20 05:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11913945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: Another near-miss for Jack. And Stephen finds the night too quiet for his peace.





	Calm in the Storm

Stephen left the island's little hospital at dusk, his sleeves turned up and blood still drying around the edges of his fingernails. Most of the casualties were likely to live. The final trephination, with reflectors set up around the patient's open skull to catch the fading daylight, was not perhaps as neat as those he had managed himself aboard ship. But it would do.

The hospital was not near the shore. Yet he heard the ocean as he walked up the road, waves pounding on the beach like distant gunfire. The sound followed him inland, through the little town full of happy, drunken seamen, who swept off their hats as he passed, or bowed so deeply they fell into a sodden, laughing heap.

Stephen caught the flash of a midshipman's white patches as one of them ducked into a house of ill-fame. He made a note to stock up on his venereal ointments.

The inn most frequented by those who could afford it was nestled in a grove set apart, as if the ornate building were an elegant lady who would not let the roughs of the town muddy her skirts. Stephen wearily mounted the stairs to the private parlor between his room and Jack's.

Jack, however, was not there. Signs and portents, to be sure—an empty coffee cup, a saucer with one lonely scrap of cheese, crumbled nutshells surely cracked between two powerful hands. Stephen rang the bell, ordered a good supper, and sat heavily in his chair, his head on one fist.

After a time, he went to the basin and scrubbed the dark crusts from his fingernails. There was no Jack here to pointedly avoid looking at his hands as they ate, but Stephen washed well nevertheless. He felt rather virtuous.

He fell asleep over the bone of his chop and the last of his wine; in his dreams, the chop bone had a compound fracture, and the wine stained his arms to the elbow.

* * *

It was not the tiptoeing of a burly sea captain that woke him in the middle of the night. Rather, he had the confused impression it was the _cessation_ of the tiptoeing—Jack standing quietly in the middle of the parlor with his shoes dangling from one hand, his stockings glimmering white in the last of the fire's glow.

"I was not asleep," Stephen informed the great shadow. Jack's teeth showed in a smile.

"Of course not. They fed you, I hope? You shouldn't have waited for me—poor Surprise needed all the decisions I could make and then some." He gave a mighty stretch, broad as a bear. "But the shipyard fellows have her well in hand, and I have great hopes of her recovery."

Stephen suppressed a yawn, brought on no doubt by Jack's tired air, carried in on his very clothes like rain. "I am delighted to hear it," he said.

"And you? The wounded?" Jack set his shoes by the door.

"The same," said Stephen. "Well in hand, with great hopes." He squinted up at Jack, but it was too dark to see the bandage at his neck and make sure there was no seepage of blood.

And before Stephen could inquire, or make himself stand to find out, Jack had passed by and opened the door of his room. "Good night, then, Stephen. Well done."

He was gone, his bedroom door closed behind him.

Stephen sat a while longer in the fading warmth of the coals. In the pitch darkness at last he rose, groped his way to his own door, and went through into the silence.

* * *

He lay in his nightshirt in the middle of the bed, covers heaped to his chin. The mattress was soft, the blankets woolly; the bedframe had thick embroidered curtains drawn close all around. He lay in a strange muffling quiet as if he were underwater.

Or, rather—even underwater there were sounds, this much he had learned from swimming with Jack. The bubbles from Jack's laughing mouth; the creak and splash of Surprise cleaving her stately way along; the water lifting and dropping him with its comfortable muttering swirl.

This was like being under the earth, instead. Buried, ears and nose filled thick with soil. He had seen the unlucky few carried out the hospital's back door toward the churchyard—no hammock-shroud and final splash overboard for them, but a hole in the ground and a heap of dirt atop.

For some time, he thought about the taste of laudanum, bitter and sharp.

Then he struggled through the bedcurtains and got up. His feet were cold on the carpets as he felt his way to the door.

* * *

His eyes well adjusted to the moonlight slanting in through Jack's window, Stephen found a chair and sat in it, realizing too late that he was sitting on something that crumpled beneath him—Jack's coat, perhaps. Preserved Killick would not be best pleased.

Jack was bound to be asleep, of course. Days on his feet, a running battle, the ship nearly sunk beneath him, then hours upon hours at the shipyard to look after his dear Surprise. Not to mention the loss of blood from his wound. But no harm in Stephen sitting here for a little while, listening to his breath.

"Why, Stephen. There you are."

Jack raised himself on one elbow, and the silver-blue light picked out his rumpled, unbound hair and his beaming face.

Stephen had no explanation for his presence, so he did not offer one. Nor did Jack ask. "Still awake," Stephen said, intending it for a question.

"So I see," said Jack, taking it for an answer. "And no dressing gown. Ain't you cold?"

Stephen shook his head. "I do not mean to disturb you."

"As if you ever could," Jack said with a laugh in his voice. He lifted a corner of the counterpane. "Won't you come in and get warm?"

Stephen had no answer to that—or none in words, anyhow. He followed Jack's smile instead, like a signal lamp glowing in a dark sea, and slipped under the blankets into the comfortable animal heat of his body.

"That's it, old Stephen," said Jack. Then he yelped. "Your feet! Icebergs ain't in it."

Stephen remorselessly captured one of Jack's big warm feet between his own and remedied the issue, as Jack whined like a dog left in the dooryard.

Jack eventually offered him a pillow, punched his own back into shape, and lay blinking drowsily at Stephen. "You'll stay, won't you?"

Stephen laid a hand on Jack's shoulder, rubbing the good linen nightshirt with his thumb for a moment. Then he leaned in close and looked hard at the bandage around Jack's neck. Moonlight was not ideal for inspection, but with the full moon, Stephen's night vision, and Jack obediently tipping his chin under Stephen's direction, it was enough. The bandage remained snowy white, cleaner than any of Jack's other daytime linen had been, not a speck of blood to be seen.

"It feels better, honestly," said Jack, his jaw moving beneath Stephen's fingers. "I don't even notice it."

"You never do," said Stephen. He heard a catch in his voice instead of the scolding he had meant.

Jack caught Stephen's hand in his and held it. "You were there to whip one of your bandages round it before I even knew what was what. No splinter can hold a candle to you."

Not thus far. As Jack had bulled and roared his way through every battle, sword and bullet and splinter leaving their marks, Stephen had been there to find the wounds and stop them. He touched the bandage, then the strong hinge of Jack's jaw, the vee of his collarbone, life coursing beneath his hand.

"You could still use some warming," Jack said, leaning into his touch.

Stephen held him by the nape and kissed him. Jack's lips were rough from salt and wind and sun, but that was as it should be. In no way could Stephen forget just who he kissed: not with Jack's roughened mouth pliant and eager on his, Jack's chest beneath him thick with well-fed muscle, Jack's big hands grappling him close and tugging up his nightshirt. He was vigorous and full of joy. Full of life. And all Stephen's world. He forgot about the splinter and the blood, the wounded, the dead. He cast himself free and forgot about everything but Jack.

* * *

In the pale hours before dawn, Stephen lay with Jack's head heavy upon his breast. Jack had begun to snore. Often, Stephen would roll him over when that happened; push him easily onto his side, perhaps, and curl up behind on the same pillow.

But this time, he listened, and the rhythmic sound followed him into sleep, blending with the voice of the sea.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Written for [msmoat](https://msmoat.dreamwidth.org/)'s prompt "quiet", for [More Joy Day 2017](https://dorinda.dreamwidth.org/68753.html).


End file.
